Over the next 5 days..... I will try and jot down the umpiring errors. No malicious intent in accusing any umpire of bias here, but for the sole reason of curiousity.
Day 1 from score 59/2 to 297/6
1) Sachin was leg before to Michael Clarke at 57. Umpire Bowden says NOT OUT.
2) Sachin was not leg before to Brett Lee at 71. Umpire Rauf says OUT.
3) Rahul was leg before to Mitchell Johnson at 67. Umpire Bowden says NOT OUT.
I missed most of the day 2 action, so I am sorry fellows, wont be able to post much on the umpiring errors. But I do feel that Dhoni & Rogers got a raw deal in terms of their LBW dismissals.
The Indian approach, however was refreshing today. But 3 more days to go, I fear an Aussie fightback.
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India Australia Third Test Match, Perth, Australia, January 16 - 20, 2008
First Day Report:
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Part I. On the Bowling
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I will let the Indian sports journalists comment, with the benefit of hindsight, on the pre-match build-up of hype and hyperbole about the cricket pitch and Shaun Tait. In fact, Sidharth Vaidyanathan had done a good job of commenting, tongue-in-cheek, about it even before the match started, in his match preview report on Cricinfo titled, 'India face a uphill task in the Wild West'. It is also instructive for readers to look at another Cricinfo article, 'West side story', Dileep Premachandran's account of the fearsome reputation of the Perth cricket pitch, particularly Curtly Ambrose's divine spell of fast bowling in the 1992-93 season at Perth that took down seven wickets, all with conceding just one run. Apart from these two articles, the enthusiastic cricket fan should avoid taking the match reports in the media (print, websites and TV channels) seriously. The media has decided, unanimously, that Australia has gained the upper edge in the match because of two late wickets in the day. There are even some journalists taking Brett Lee's figure of 3 wickets for 64 runs at the end of the day, in spite of a costly opening spell of 25 runs in 4 overs, as signs of a maturing bowler. The fact is that, to the last man, the media has missed one of the most important lessons in the history of cricket, as will be explained in my arguments below.
The level of fast bowling skills that were on display from the Australian team today is one of the most telling evidence that, in spite of winning 16 consecutive test matches twice, Australia could not possibly claim to have ever equaled the dominance of world cricket that the West Indies side achieved from the mid-70s to the early 90s. It was under Clive Lloyd that the West Indies perfected the strategy of employing a sustained pace attack using a quartet of fast bowlers. Before that, there were the famous Lillee-Thompson duo, but otherwise, fast bowlers relied on their individual skills and efforts, rather than operated as a multi-pronged pace battery. With their new approach, the West Indians elevated fast bowling to a world of soulful artistry. At an elementary level, it required fitness and endurance to consistently run in to bowl at speeds upwards of 140 kmph. However, it was much more important that it required graceful body movements and a natural sense of rhythm to be able to do it with the minimum of effort. It was this grace and rhythm that made possible two crucial elements of the West Indies pace attack that the current Australian team lacks. The first of these two elements was sustained intensity of fast bowling for a full session of play. The second was to bowl accurately at high speeds without sacrificing variety.
The West Indies bowlers were natural athletes, the Caribbean being always famous for sprinters. In addition, they had grown up to think of fast bowling as an high art, an expression of their soulful Calypso rhythm. It was this combination that teased out their natural abilities to focus their mental and physical energies on the bowling. As a result, they brought a deep sense of professionalism to the craft of fast bowling. The first spell of overs for a team batting against the West Indies was played out in a world entirely different from the physical one. It required the greatest of concentration on the batsman's part to counter their pace, accuracy and control. As an analogy, one might say that getting through the first hour of play required the same intense concentration as listening, in pin-drop silence, to Bach's Gospel music in a chapel. The readers are advised to learn about the skill and concentration required for an opening batsman to face the West Indies fast bowling successfully by reading the famous trilogy of books by Sunil Gavaskar, namely, Sunny Days, Runs 'n' Ruins and Idols.
In contrast, the current Australian fast bowling strategy is to hurl the ball at a fast pace, hoping that the sledging and the pre-match hyperbole would intimidate the batsman and the umpires enough to get them the wicket. To be sure, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee have pioneered some interesting techniques, as will be explained below, but on the whole, it is their brute-force, soul-less approach which often brings them success, and this is how they have won many of their tests, starting from the captaincy of Steve Waugh to his successor, Ricky Ponting. What they lacked in their professional abilities to examine the batsman's technical skills and concentration, they made up for with their hunting-in-a-pack, sledging tactics. Whereas the West Indies bowlers worked on the mental disintegration of the batsmen, who were often of world-class reputation, purely through their expertise in fast bowling, the Australians have come to rely on sledging on the field and propaganda through the media.
Now, I must interject to say that the Australian fast bowler who comes closest to the famed West Indian bowlers of the 70s and 80s, in terms of professional expertise, is Glenn McGrath. His approach to fast bowling is worth examining here. A fast bowler typically has a long run-up and there are lots of body movements involved before he delivers the ball. In contrast, the batsman has relatively little movement of his feet, legs, arms, wrists and torso. On the other hand, the batsman has only a split-second to react to the fast ball coming at him, and as a result, he is definitely going to make very minor mistakes in his posture, balance and stroke-play. Thanks to the high pace of the ball, these minor faults could be exploited and amplified. With this rationale, McGrath developed the strategy that the bowler did not need to place the ball at different places while bowling at high speeds. In fact, this would often lead to mistakes, in view of the large number of body movements involved. Instead, he figured that the bowler should stick to a narrow, nagging line just outside the off-stump. This provided for great accuracy, while maintaining high speeds, and offered scope for varying the bounce and the length. The punchline, however, was that since it was just outside the off-stump, the batsman could be induced to play away from his body, and the ball could go for a catch if he didn't play the shot correctly, or it could crash into the stumps if he missed completely.
As part of the industrial approach to cricket pioneered by the Australian team, McGrath's bowling strategy was a cornerstone. However, one must note that the West Indies bowlers were able to maintain variety and pace as well as accuracy. In my mind, the quintessential personification of this skill is the picture of Curtly Ambrose flaying his arms and cursing loudly in the rare occasion that he made a mistake. By the end of his career, Ambrose was the world's premier exponent of the fast bowler's art. He could quickly gauge the batsman's weaknesses and he could place the ball precisely on the pitch with the design of exploiting the batsman's mistakes -- mental disintegration at a very sophisticated level. Invariably, he knew immediately after releasing the ball, if he had aimed it right or not. He made mistakes rarely, but when he did, the spectators witnessed his loud cursing. I must mention here that Curtly Ambrose was just one example in the long tradition of the West Indian art of fast bowling. Remember the Whispering Death? The point is that this type of professional expertise in fast bowling could not be expected from this so-called world champion Australian cricket team of today.
Coming back to the sorry state of the current Australian bowlers, their litany of woes does not start with Ponting's decision to go in with four pace bowlers, but it is definitely a milestone. Having built-up huge physique and arm power by pumping iron regularly, these bowlers simply lack the natural grace for serious fast bowling, and it tells in their inability to bowl with sustained intensities at the rate of 13 to 15 overs an hour. A fielding team is expected to bowl 90 overs in a day of test cricket. But, by the time this 'fearsome' quartet of Australian pace bowlers had bowled the half-way mark of 45 overs, they had already run more than half-hour over time. Even worse, they simply could not sustain the intensity of fast bowling for prolonged periods. Either they could not control the ball at such high pace, or they became too tired in the heat (36 C to 39 C) to bowl at high speeds for long duration. When they strayed even a little, they were hammered for boundaries, since the Indians had gambled on opening their innings with Virender Sehwag. After the first ten overs, the score read like that of a one-day match -- 50 for no loss. This Australian team simply lacks the technical proficiency and the many years of training required to elevate fast bowling to an art that the West Indians had done so beautifully in their prime.
In spite of the two wickets that fell late in the first day, that of Dravid and Laxman, rather unnecessarily, the Indian team must realize that the Australian bowling attack simply barks and does not bite. The Australians also could not possibly get through another full session of sustained fast bowling. So, if the Indians survive, without losing a wicket, during the first hour on the second day, keeping in mind that weather predictions are for a hot day, there is simply no way the Australians can bowl over 145 kmph consistently through the rest of the day. Moreover, this effort of surviving the first hour would also serve to take the shine of the second new ball. Only an occasional ball would be really fast, but otherwise India is looking at a real good scoring opportunity. The Australians don't have a professional full-time spinner, and they could be made to pay for this error of judgment if India's tail of experienced cricketers -- Anil Kumble, Irfan Pathan -- wags defiantly. If the Indians keep their wits about them, there is no reason why they cannot reach a total of 400 in their first innings.
(Part II on the batting would follow later)
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